A Japanese nuclear restart could help Australia in two ways.. it would revive the price of yellowcake and hold down the price of gas for domestic use. The connection between gas and uranium runs deep since the proposed expansion of the Olympic Dam mine was to be based on gas fired energy. The Fukushima event was probably the final straw that saw the expansion mothballed.

Few people ask what we will do to replace gas in the second half of the century. Fertilisers like urea based on the Haber Bosch process are said to enable world population to be a third larger than otherwise. We could use gas a transport fuel noting the new Chevrolet Impala will run on both compressed natural gas and petrol. We should not be using gas for baseload electricity (a job for nukes), for LNG export or for extracting tar sands but saving it for the long run.

Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 29 January 2014 9:47:03 AM

This article brings together several strands of the LNG story dispassionately and rationally.

Well done!

Expect the first Japanese restart to be the most difficult. From there, the next and the next will be less problemmatic. Basing this "what if" discussion on 50% return to service of nuclear power plant thus seems reasonable, but in what time frame?

5 years? The bottom has already fallen out of the Japanese balance sheet. In 5 years, the implications from a falling currency and hence the value of Japanese private savings will be socially very significant.

10 years? Might as well be never, because Japan will be difficult to recognise with accumulating foreign exchange losses of hundreds of billions of dollars and with scarce natural energy resources. The current buffer is private savings. These are primarily held in Yen and will thus devalue as inflation and external negative balance of trade take their toll. The Yen will be useless for overseas trade, so oil and coal purchases will have to cease. Not pretty.

If Japan's economy is to avoid having to be redesigned from the bottom up, the Japanese nuclear power stations will be needed back on line asap.

This discussion is central to the world's energy and economy futures. The effects on the economy and the Yen will be evident much sooner than the effects on climate.

Posted by JohnBennetts, Wednesday, 29 January 2014 10:04:46 AM

Taswegian

Expecting nuclear energy would solve Australia baseload power needs is as politically impossible as some of the Greens more unlikely energy schemes.

Australians can't even agree on a National Low or Medium nuclear waste dump site let alone a High level waste dump that spent Reactor fuel rods would need to be stored in - for many-many years.

Interesting thread.It should be remembered that Oilprice.com is a part of the oil & gasindustry and that site does publish a fairly wide spread of views.However like the rest of the industry on the whole it seems to believethat the flow of gas from fracked wells is a long term supply.

Like the fracked tight oil wells, the gas wells are on borrowed time with high production decline rates.The end of this decade will see the end of their significant production.The whole oil & gas fracking industry faces a finance problem due to poor returns on previous investment. BHP, Shell, Mobil & Chesapeake are all out of that business now.To quote Mobil's CEO; "We are losing our shirts !".

Australian nuclear will never happen, we have left it too late even ifthe political obstacles could be overcome,The financial and insurance requirements can never be met.Such a program requires an economy with vibrant growth.

We really need to get selfish and reserve the largest part for ourselves. We have a very dodgy supply of petrol & diesel and soonall refineries in Australia will be closed and we will be importing100% of our supply. The reason they are closing is because we now onlyproduce about 40% of our usage and it is declining at about 4% a year.It is cheaper to import from the larger Singapore refineries.

To be more self supporting we need to convert a large proportion ofour transport fleet, cars & trucks to CNG. If we do that the gas willnot last as long as it is now being forecast.

I do not know what the proportion would be but I suspect that transportwould use more that half the available gas if most of the fleet was converted.Cont:

Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 4 February 2014 9:43:55 AM

Cont:So you can see our problem;1. Flog of all the gas we have2. Sell none of it & use for transport3. Sell some, but keep most

If 1. Walk or ride a bicycleIf 2. Drive for many more years and run factories & homesIf 3. Drive for some years and run factories & homes

Crudely those are the choices we have. The governments ABIRE toldthe previous government this so they suppress the report and thecurrent government is doing an Admiral Nelson on it.

Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 4 February 2014 9:45:37 AM

Baz is either very much a pessimist or has closed his mind to some of the options.

Of course nuclear is a difficult political sell, but it is absolutely incorrect to say that it is unable to be financed or insured. The proven, actuarial risks associated with nuclear, even the current commercial options, are far lower than with every other form of electricity production than hydro. That includes solar, wind, etc. The cradle to grave scenario has been explained many times, but it is politics which stand in the way.

Indeed, the insurance fund in the USA which the nuclear generators have built up is so large that there are pressures from the contributors to cease or to drastically reduce their contributions and from the politicians to syphon half off for other projects.

Similarly, Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) figures published by various sources, having regard to all lifetime factors including insurance and end-of life costs are available from many sources. They demonstrate conclusively that it is not cost which holds nuclear power back.

It isn't safety, or cost, or insurance or financing that prevent consideration of nuclear power: it is emotion, expressed as lack of political will.

And please, don't come back with arguments about "waste". Nuclear waste, left to itself, eventually becomes benign, through decay. That isn't the case for wastes such as lead or arsenic or asbestos or a long list of other permanent pollutants which attract less attention, despite the fact that they never decay. Once introduced into an environment, they continue to accumulate, damage, re-accumulate and get passed up and down food chains for ever. Read up about Type IV reactors, for which the technology was demonstrated 40+ years ago, and discover just how tiny the waste from a nuclear power station can be and how simple and safe it can be to manage very safely indeed.

The truth is that nuclear power is virtually waste-free in comparison with everything else available.